


Savior

by galacticbasic



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Anakin Burns on Mustafar, Brotherly Love, Canon Divergence - Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Gen, I'm Sorry, Mustafar (Star Wars), Short One Shot, Slow Burn, The One Where Obi-Wan Doesn’t Abandon Anakin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25298884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticbasic/pseuds/galacticbasic
Summary: Obi-Wan cannot abandon Anakin on Mustafar, though Palpatine is coming. A short AU-oneshot with no definitive end.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 3
Kudos: 59





	Savior

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [i love you still](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/649252) by shatouto. 



Mustafar.

“I _hate_ you,” Anakin is screaming, clawing hand and fist into the volcanic dirt as he burns. The man standing above him has destroyed his body, done worse than he thought Obi-Wan Kenobi capable of. Wrought evil with the very saber he pledged to use for good; to protect the innocent, the weak, and his friends. Ruthless he turned the Light against him, and so Anakin would be ruthless in his way all the same. 

Yet the rage seething off him is nothing more than combustion, a reaction between substances, an inevitability once put together. The former Jedi lashes out because he must. Because it is the only action left worth clinging to, that he is able to perform.

His master knows this. He feels it deep as his soul, the Force, the living one. It is an ache that must have pervaded his own master, Qui-Gon, when he lived; the burden of a thousand suffering life-forms pleading for salvation. The visible heat of Mustafar intensifies this agonied bond with his former padawan and then shatters it to oblivion.

Obi-Wan does not say he loved Anakin, or anything else; if he is Vader now, a child-killer, a Sith, a monstrous, unfathomable evil—he loves him all the same. The striking yellow eyes can sense nothing except the conflicted visage of his master rising out of ash and flame, even as the tears well up and spill out, marring his sight, boiling to vapor along his charring skin. He screams nothing more, for he can no longer speak; his vocal cords fry and snap in his throat.

Could Qui-Gon leave him to die here, alone, dismembered and abandoned?

A dangerous game, this; to believe a being such as that which lies before him not past saving. But Obi-Wan courses down the incline, obsidian tumbling from beneath his feet, inching closer to the scorching river as Anakin prevents himself desperately from sliding back, embedding his steel arm into the gravel to keep hold. The Jedi extends a hand, the other gripping onto his lightsaber, and crouches until he is nearly laying on his chest. The Force pulls him forward instead of his apprentice out, and all at once it seems Anakin is trying to drag him past into the flowing lava.

Still he believes he is more powerful than his master.

Their hands meet with a sharp hiss, the metal searing into Obi-Wan as he tears the Sith from the edge and hauls him to rest on his cool body. The meeting of their figures causes him no pain, just as it brings his counterpart no relief. Anakin is holding onto him tight enough to rip him open, the Force he employs like phantom limbs, scoring vicious marks into his flesh like blackened veins in marble. 

“I know,” Obi-Wan offers, his palms scarred to the muscle, the imprint of the Sith melting his nerves away. The Jedi will not do to let emotion overtake them. But this he needs to mourn; his brother, his apprentice, his life and hope for years.

Anakin glares up, a stark green at the inner rim of his irises, still sickly golden at the outer. The battle inside him rages, more vehement than ever, overwhelming any sense, the sole remaining emotion his absolute terror. The Light and Dark are rending him in two, and Obi-Wan cannot stop it; not for the Force, nor for the galaxy, nor for his friend. The ground shakes with tectonic tremors and it seems the pair will be consumed in the acrid atmosphere, or be vaporized in the dry feverish heat surrounding and pervading them.

Obi-Wan is staring out at the endless expanse, the stars so numerous in the distant skies they blur together into a dappled blush of hazy blue. Out of the blackness edging in, the smallest flinch of silence comes to his senses, aeons from where he lies in half-consciousness.

_Master,_ it whispers, a bruised voice born stifled, oppressed. _I’m afraid._

The tears streak past his temples, but this time it is Obi-Wan who cannot speak. It is he who has failed this child, this supposed savior; this slave boy from Tatooine.

He only prays the Republic ships will find them before anyone else can.


End file.
